Actor Zakes Mokae died 11 September 2009 from complications of a stroke he suffered on 6 May. Born 5 August 1935 in Johannesburg, South Africa, he won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for “MASTER HAROLD”… and the boys, and was nominated again in 1993 for The Song of Jacob Zulu.
Mokae first gained attention in 1960 when he performed with Athol Fugard in the latter’s play The Blood Knot, about brothers with different skin colors (Mokae was black, Fugard is white). The two met as part of a drama collective in South Africa in the 1950s. Fugard said on Monday that that play was the first black and white performers had appeared on the same stage in South Africa. Mokae moved with the play to England later in the decade. In 1970, he arrived in the US in the off-Broadway premiere of Boesman and Lena with Ruby Dee and James Earl Jones.
In the States, he also moved into television and films. His genre appearances include: The X Files (1996), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Waterworld (1995), Outbreak (1995), Slaughter of the Innocents (1993), Dust Devil (1992), Body Parts (1991), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Knight Rider (1983), and The Island (1980).
Mokae is survived by his wife, Madelyn (whom he married in 1966, divorced in 1978, and remarried in 1985), two sisters and two brothers, a daughter, and three grandchildren. For more on his career and his role in the social upheaval that marked South Africa, see this New York Times obituary.